Skip to main content

Always the Happy Ending

Why do almost all popular films, novels, TV shows, and just everything in the world of entertainment always seem to follow the same basic structure? Always followed by the saying...

And They Lived Happily Ever After- I want this tattoo in latin "et vixerunt et semper postquam feliciter" | Wall quotes, Vinyl wall quotes, Quotes

First, we get an introduction to the characters' lives then BAM a problem. Next, we're taken through their rollercoaster of a journey and yay, the problem gets solved and they live happily ever after. Right there, I just summed up about hundreds of different pieces of entertainment. Yet, even with this repetitive story line, us, the audience, is almost always left satisfied wanting more but why is that if we can predict what's going to happen? How is something so predictable and repetitive still so entertaining? I think the answer to this question is that the audience likes getting the happy ending because by the end of the movie, novel, or whatever it is, we feel as if we are part of the story. While feeling like we're part of the story, we're taken out of our own stressful lives, just for a moment and placed into an imaginary yet stress-free zone. The way the creator structures the piece of entertainment makes us want the character to win. Ultimately, the piece becomes quite personal as it begins to play with our own emotions. I believe this is also why the happy, predictable structure is so appealing to its audience. Personally, I know anytime I go to the movie theater and watch a film with a happy ending, I leave feeling happy. On the other hand, when a movie doesn't follow the predictable happy ending, I leave feeling unsettled and almost disturbed. With this in mind, is the basic, predictable story structure all that bad? I guess it really just depends on who you're asking. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the Green Light?

While only a few chapters into, "The Great Gatsby", a distinct symbol that has been presented multiple times, is the green light. At the end of chapter 1, we saw the green light as Nick spotted Gatsby, and later on, we see it again. "Involuntarily I glanced seaward--and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been at the end of a dock" (Fitzgerald 21). This quote signifies how the green light has multiple meanings behind it. The green light represents Gatsby's undying love for daisy, the American dream, and wealth. Since the quote explains that the green light is on a dock, us readers can infer that this dock is daisy's house and with Gatsby staring at it, it shows his strong love for her. The green light also represents the American dream and wealth. This green light is not exactly tangible for Gatsby. Although Gatsby has seemed to achieved the American dream through his wealth, he did not do it the right way....
3 comments
Read more

What's So Great About Poetry?

Poetry- the unit that most students dread to learn about in their English class. But why is poetry so disliked among high school students? A few of these reasons, and that I can attest for personally, are that poetry is seen as old, it can be quite difficult to understand/interpret, and we just fail to see the point of it. However, after interpreting some poems in class, my perspective began to shift (only slightly not significantly though). While I am still not the biggest fan of poetry, I am beginning to see a different side to it.  Yes, poetry is all of the negative things that I stated above (at least in my opinion) but once poetry is understood, the lesson becomes that much clearer and applicable. Understanding and correctly interpreting poetry is not only a beneficial skill to have but it also opens your eyes to a deeper understanding to things that are important in terms of culture, history, and etc. For example, poetry has effectively been used to advocate and teach about i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Everlasting Mistakes: America Never Seems to Learn

America is essentially naive. We take what we want and we take what we have for granted. If something is going to propel our status up, whether it's for wealth, our social lives, or just out of selfishness, we don't seem to even hesitate to act. As we observe in Raymo's piece, the act of selfishness and naiveté is what drives their decisions, and eventually, will lead to their own death. The piece takes place in 1987, which is only around 25 years from when we learned how harmful cigarettes actually were. Just like in Raymo's piece when the six-year-old girl "rubbed the glowing dust on her body" not knowing that the "beautiful dust" would "damage her living cells" (Raymo 212) and kill her, our society did something quite similar and acted out of same naiveté. We did the same thing with tobacco and cigarettes and blindly rushed into using them because "they were cool" and "the new thing". Then once it was already too late...
2 comments
Read more